


The Devil is no laughing matter

by 8BeautifulChaosGirl8



Series: There is no recovery from Hell [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Emotionally Hurt Sam, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Post-Hell, Post-Hell Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 00:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6543769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8BeautifulChaosGirl8/pseuds/8BeautifulChaosGirl8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to recover in a world that doesn't take your pain seriously. It's enough to turn pain into rage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil is no laughing matter

Dean really didn’t want to lock his brother down. He’d been in the cage for an age, locked up like a wild animal. Dean wanted Sam to feel free, to feel different. To know that he was out. Dean wanted to establish a marked difference between Sam’s experience of hell and the real world. But it was *** difficult to do that when his brother, completely unable to take care of himself, wandered off.

That was really the best way to describe Sam’s behaviour. One moment he’d be calmly sitting on the couch while Dean pottered in the kitchen, the next moment he was up, out the door and gone. Like right now for example. 

Dean cursed, quickly switching the stove off and putting the food in the fridge. He was not going to bring his brother back to a house that was burning down. But he was going to bring him back. He pulled out his cell phone, thanking a God he barely believed in that he’d had the wherewithal to turn Sam’s GPS on and plant his cell phone on him. It was only one step above those bracelets dementia patients wore but at least this way Dean could look at Sam and not immediately see a victim. A sick person. A broken thing. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Siri’s chirpy voice sounds weird echoing around his baby, but Dean let’s it go. He’s far more focused on where the hell that voice is leading him. Deeper and deeper into the part of town smart people avoid, the buildings seem to get more and more derelict the further down the road you went. Save for the dive establishments. The liquor store was doing well, as were the porn shop and the bars. 

“You have arrived at your destination”

Oh ***. O balls and *** and *** and buggery-bollocks. Dean knew immediately why his brother was here, just by reading the sign. 

Lucifer’s Girls. Strip Club and Bar. 

Dean was hoping his brother was just inside, catatonic. That he could pull him out peaceably and maybe Sam would even forget this whole thing, with enough sleep and smiling. 

That hope was shot to hell when a chair burst through the window, a terrific crash littering the sidewalk with lethal glass shards. Sam’s screaming in a foreign tongue and ***ed if that doesn’t just tear through Dean like razor wire. As he runs inside he promises himself he will check each and every town he brings Sam to, that this will never again. Meanwhile it’s happening now and he doesn’t have a clue how to stop it. 

The scene he walks into is ten times worse than it first appeared. Patrons and girls are running screaming from the building, scrambling over broken and overturned furniture. The place was bright, hot and distorted from the flames leaping from the gutted bar. It looked like a wild animal with a penchant for pyromania had been set loose in the place. Dean pushes through these screaming people, desperate to find his brother. 

“Sam?! SAMMY!”

He listens frantically. Moaning echoes above the crackle of flames and spitting pops of burning alcohol. Dean scrambles towards it, coughing against the smoke. 

He finds him, sunken to his knees, in the far corner of the room. He’s screaming and twitching, eyes fixed on a wooden statue, a crude smiling representation of a stereotypical devil, horns tail and all. Sam’s hands are burnt and bleeding, his hair smoky and singed. 

“Sammy?” Dean is terrified both for and of his brother in this moment. He puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and unknowingly triggers an explosion. 

A guttural scream wrenches out of Sam’s throat and he is on his feet. With no regard for the pain or the fresh blood welling up, he lashes out at the statue. His rage is arresting. Intoxicating. Horrific and visceral.

“You have no idea! He would roast you alive! He would string out your guts across the galaxy and pour fire into your empty bellies! You laugh! You ***ing morons! How can you laugh?” 

He pulls the one knife Dean had forgotten he owned and plunges it into the statue’s eye. Wrenching it back with almost inhuman strength, Sam slashes at the things smile until it is nothing but splinters and shards. With this sudden effort over, he sinks back to his knees. 

“Sammy?” Dean doesn’t touch him again. 

With watery eyes his baby brother looks up at him “Why do they laugh? How can they laugh?” 

“They don’t know Sammy. They think he’s just a cartoon.”

“I never laughed. They were all laughing. I never did….”

Sam collapses forward, doubled over at the waist. Face down in the ashes of his own wrought destruction, the broken boy weeps. 

Vaguely in the distance, Dean hears police sirens. He gingerly takes his brother’s arm, pulls him up and away. He has no idea how to fix it. 

But he will. So help him he will.


End file.
